26 responses to “Why is Dengue Fever up 300% so far this year?”

Bajans are filthy, they leave all their fast food containers all over the place. The coconut venders dump their husk where ever they please, no one to arrest them, no accountability. Unhealthy dump sites all over the place, really disgusting, and it’s not just the young the old is just as bad. In Bridgetown there are bins at every corner how many people do you see put their empty ccntainer in a bin?

It has been wet. no getting around that. but we know that when it gets wet we need vector control. We heard nothing from the guvment until people started dying and the 300% number came out. Always a response, never prevention. That’s the motto for this place!

Not but it has everything to do with the females laying eggs in standing water just like the ponds at Buccament Bay. There is no vaccine yet and the only effective control is to eliminate the mosquitoes and prevent breeding. Between 1960 and 2010 the incidence of dengue increased 30-fold mainly due to population increase and urban development. It is a killer disease and endemic in the Caribbean.

Someone said it correctly on here, let’s see how we can prevent instead of controlling, seem like the way to go to me. The folks at the Ministry of Health need to do some work for a change, where is the epidemiologist that is working for the State not hearing much from that sector, whats going on.

@mosquito coast. The rudeness comes from the continual mis information spouted by worriedinvestor. It has nothing to do with sewerage, which certainly does not go into the ponds. Standing water maybe. This article was originally about Barbados, but now BB is responsible for an outbreak in SVG. Unbelievable.

None of the comments above explain why there has been a dramatic increase THIS year. What is clear, however, is that the dry season was very short and the rains broke early – and there has been high humidity since. If this IS the base position then all the other things mentioned here may be factored in.

It has nothing to do the with the rains Robert Ross. It has all to do with the approach to eradication of breeding media, which prior to the rainy season must be an aggressive proactive one. The ministry of health have all the data with respect to the affected areas and water catchments and various indices. Yet you hardly hear of any prosecutions against repeat offenders. The increase can be linked to the practices and neglect of householders to pay attention to potential mosquito breeding foci, If drastic action is taken against householders and property owners you will see the mosquito problem completely reduced or come to near eradication. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ERADICATE MOSQUITOES COMPLETELY. But you can control their numbers in any event

There is a company called Oxitec which has developed a genetically modified sterile dengue mosquito. Basically, they breed millions of them and release them into the wild. The wild mosquitos mate with them. Result – a huge reduction in offspring. In trials they are reporting a reduction of 96% in the number of mosquitos.
Government should volunteer Barbados for a trial.
No doubt there will be a few anti-GM loonies who will be against it because they are against anything GM, but personally, I would support anything that reduced dengue cases by 96% and stopped the population from having to inhale diesel and pesticide from the fogging.

Nothing has changed!!! We are a crisis response island. Resources were limited before and they will even be more limited now. The failings and blame must be two fold: First that government officials responsible for environmental matters are not enforcing the respective law in this matter and that public health official are lackadaisical in their approach and secondly, many households are not doing enough to keep their surroundings free from potential media that breed mosquitoes.
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Those anti-GM loonies sure are all around us. Here is another absolutely clueless “loony” just like all of them are out there in la-la land who still holds on to his loony-tune ideas that the risk inherent in artificially tinkering with the genetics of our food supply (i.e. by using the current techniques of Genetic Engineering) is not worth the potential risk. This is the acknowledged polymath, author and expert in risk assessment (AND LOONY if you want to believe SGD), now serving as the Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University Nassim Taleb.

What i am more concerned about is the chemicals they use for fogging, i believe it makes people ill, is it a banned in North America/Europe chemical? while the mosquitoes go merrily along their way biting everyone. More info is needed, that chemical used to fog is toxic, while on the island i had an allergic reaction to it.

There is quite a lot of evidence that the incidence of dengue increases with the number of water tanks in use. Dengue went into a decline in developing countries as increasing numbers of households had access to municipal water and so became less reliant on water tanks which tend to harbour mosquito larvae. Dengue rates then went up as countries reintroduced tanks. I was shocked when we built our house that although we were required to build a water tank there was no requirement to include anything to stop mosquitoes accessing it. Shortly after completion we found the tank was full of mosquitoes – we installed mesh across the inlet and the problem was solved. Australia had the same problem and solved it by requiring similar mesh.
Someone told me that mosquito protection is now a requirement in the Barbados building regs (does anyone know whether that is true?) but even so I bet there is nothing done about the huge numbers of tanks built before. The Ministry of Health encourages people to add fish or dunks etc to the tank water to prevent the mosquito larvae but how much more sensible it would be to stop the mosquitoes from getting in there in the first place

It was only a matter of time…that the cases of Dengue fever would be on the increase. I am a regular visitor to barbados and react very badly to mosquito bites, always ending up at the hospital on antibiotics etc…This year was the first time that I visited Barbados without being bitten, this was due to a powerful repellant that I used by (incognito Mosquito), a pop up mosquito net (excellent piece of equipment) and constantly wearing jeans and long sleeved tops, not only in the day but also to bed..YES AND I SWEATTED LIKE MAD!! But my health is more important than anything else. About 4 years ago we visited BBD and stayed at our parents house, during our stay we noticed quite a lot of mosquitos, and knew that this was due to the neighbour and his filthy habits, We called environmental Health who came to assess the premises and found mosquito larvae in abundance. We were assured that action would be taken but to date the same situation still stands. (No one seems to care until the situation becomes a major catastrophy) I became very sick after beng bitten and returned to London only to fnd out I had blood clots on my lungs…Barbados is very filthy and the Ministry of health and the Government needs to take serious action. Fines and even inprisonment should be imposed on certain people who choose to live in such squalor. I am so angry and upset to hear of this development!!

Driving past Coral Reef today and the road was a swamp of black stagnant water on either side no surprise to hear that even one of the owners of Coral Reef Hotel has dengue then. This must be a prime breeding ground for the mosquito feel the need to leave the island and stop playing russian roulette with these insects.